Key events
Exeter 2-2 Nottingham Forest
62 min: Niskanen goes close for Exeter! Could they really nick a winner?! The Finnish’s finish draws Sels into a brilliant save just a few minutes after coming on. Forest are living dangerously!
GOAL! Sporting 0-1 Borussia Dortmund (Guirassy 60)
A simple yet beautiful goal! Brandt has time and space to cross on the right wing and the German curls one to the back post. Guirassy gets up early above the Sporting defenders and plants a wonderful looping header over Rui Silva and into the far corner! Huge goal in the tie!
Exeter 2-2 Nottingham Forest
58 min: Forest are going to have to change their keeper with Carlos Miguel suffering an injury. The Brazilian has has a nightmare night in Devon. Completely at fault for Exeter’s first goal, he perhaps could have done better for their second too, failing to come for the cross that led to Magennis’s shot. Sels, arguably the best keeper in the Premier League this season, is on.
GOAL! Juventus 1-1 PSV (Perisic 55)
A sumptuous goal by the Croatian veteran! It’s against the run of play, but this is a goal full of quality with Perisic controlling a rebounded shot with the deftest of touches, cutting inside Kelly and firing a lazer of a left-footed shot inside Di Gregorio’s near post! Perisic has always been very two-footed and you won’t see a better example: right-foot control, left-foot finish.
The goal was checked by VAR for a PSV handball by Lang in the build-up, but eventually given. I think the Dutch side are a bit lucky to get away with that one, personally!
GOAL! Exeter 2-2 Nottingham Forest (Boly og 51)
Exeter are level! From a corner Magennis wins a back post header, the ball pinballs around the six-yard box, and the Northern Ireland striker somehow turns the loose ball home! It was a horribly messy strike, bobbling in off Boly’s foot I think, but Exeter won’t care. St James Park erupts!
Exeter 1-2 Nottingham Forest
49 min: “Oi,” emails Damian Clarke reacting to the height of Exeter goalkeeper Joe Whitworth. “Just 5ft8in? 5ft5in goalkeeper here. Thank you very much (OK, indoor five a side veterans). But still …”
“Now that Liverpool has fallen victim to the Pilgrims’ progress, I’m rooting for the underdogs in the FA Cup,” writes Peter Oh. “Come on Exeter! By the way, I’m wondering how much League One players make. How much does a Grecian earn?”
Looks like the best paid Exeter players make around £3-4k a week. Not too shabby, but less than Morgan Gibbs-White makes in a lunchbreak. Probably.
Juventus 1-0 PSV
47 min: Mbangula has come on for Yilmaz at half-time. That’s a straight swap but I’m surprised by that. The Turkish international was fairly bright.
Peeeeeeeeep!
We are live in the Champions League matches and will be up and running again with Exeter v Forest shortly.
Half-time reading:
Half-time: Exeter 1-2 Nottingham Forest
Whitworth, who has let in two goals but otherwise been excellent for Exeter, does very well to clear away a corner from under his own crossbar through a crowded penalty area just before the half-time whistle. The keeper, on loan from Crystal Palace, stands at just 5ft8in!
Half-time: Sporting 0-0 PSV
Goalless at the break.
Half-time: Juventus 1-0 PSV
The Old Lady are well worth their lead.
Sporting 0-0 Dortmund
43 min: Meanwhile, it’s Dortmund pushing for the opener in Lisbon. Guirassy tries his luck from range, there’s a wicked deflection and Rui Silva has to palm is over. The ball was spinning under the bar! From the resulting corner, Guirassy pokes wide but replays show the Dortmund striker is well offside.
Juventus 1-0 PSV
40 min: Juventus are increasingly dominant in Turin. De Jong is cutting a lonely figure up top for PSV, who have threatened from set pieces but otherwise been a little stale.
Half-time scores in the Football League
GOAL! Exeter 1-2 Nottingham Forest (Awoniyi 37)
Awoniyi gets his goal, just his second of the season due to Wood’s form. To be fair to the Forest striker, this is an expert bit of forward play: receiving a pass with his back to goal, holding off two Exeter defenders on the edge of the area and swivelling beautifully to curl a left-footed shot right into the bottom corner. Whitworth didn’t move! That was Premier League class.
GOAL! Juventus 1-0 PSV (McKennie 33)
Gatti engineers the opening, breaking tackles and cantering up from centre-back before he crosses to Muani. The Frenchman is denied by Benitez, but after another key touch from Gatti, the rebound falls to McKennie on the edge of the area and the American hammers a volley into the roof of the net! An absolute thunderbastard, but that chance was all made by the industriousness of Gatti.
Exeter 1-1 Nottingham Forest
30 min: Outrageous save from Whitworth to deny Awoniyi! Wooooow, this is a world-class stop to keep Exeter level, diving to his right and tipping the Nigerian’s volley around the post! How?!
Exeter 1-1 Nottingham Forest
27 min: Demetri Mitchell, who created Exeter’s goal, remains a real threat down the League One club’s right flank. Toffolo is struggling to deal with the former Manchester United academy man.
There has been a goal at the Etihad.
Brest 0-3 PSG match report
Juventus 0-0 PSV
23 min: A penny for the thoughts of Lloyd Kelly. One minute you can’t get a kick for Newcastle, the next you are lining up in a Champions League knock-out tie for Juventus. Football is a funny game.
Also, can someone check on Marcus Edwards, now on loan at Burnley from Sporting. I can’t say I have watched a lot of Sporting recently but it wasn’t too long ago that he was a key part of this Portuguese team. Now the 26-year-old is in the Championship.
Exeter 1-1 Nottingham Forest
21 min: Forest are starting to hit their stride now with long spells of possession. Sangare and Danilo pulling the strings.
Sporting 0-0 Dortmund
18 mins: I miss Marco Reus.
Sporting 0-0 Dortmund
16 mins: Sporting hit the bar! Araujo finds some room 25 yards out and crashes a shot so hard against Dortmund’s bar that the ball rebounds well outside the penalty area. Dortmund look rattled and are lucky to still be on level terms.
GOAL! Exeter 1-1 Nottingham Forest (Sosa 14)
Sosa levels! The Paraguayan collects a chipped pass, wiggles through a couple of Exeter challenges and finds the finish past Whitworth. Forest will be delighted but that was weak defending in truth, a soft one to concede.
Juventus 0-0 PSV
10 min: Benitez dallies on the ball and is nearly caught by McKennie, who is inches from tackling the goalkeeper on his own six-yard line, but actually ends up leaving a few stud marks in the PSV keeper’s ankle. Ouch.
Exeter 1-0 Nottingham Forest
7 min: Genuinely one of the worst goalkeeping howlers of the season. This is just Carlos Miguel’s third appearance of the season. The Brazilian, signed from Corinthians last summer, will have been building himself up for tonight but the pressure seems to have got to him. That was a regulation catch.
GOAL! Exeter 1-0 Nottingham Forest (Magennis 5)
Oh my days! Exeter in dreamland! Mitchell tries a hopeful cross, Carlos Miguel should catch it easily but makes a dreadful spill and Magennis is there to poke in the rebound! Wooooow! Another Devon shock is on.
Juventus v PSV
2 min: Muani, who has been on flames since joining on loan from PSG, breaks the offside trap, draws Benitez out of the PSV goal and cuts the ball back to Yildiz but the Turkish international can’t force the ball into the empty net with Ledezma making an excellent last-ditch block.
Peeeeeeeeeep!
We are off in all three matches. I will post the half-time scores in the Football League (Championship, League One and League Two matches) in about half an hour.
The teams are out! The Champions League anthems have been played (not in Devon, unfortunately).
It’s interesting to see that Dortmund’s big-money summer signing Waldemar Anton has been left out after his own goal in the weekend defeat to Stuttgart.
Nottingham Forest manager Nuno Espírito Santo speaks!
It’s not a risk [to make 10 changes from the 7-0 win over Brighton]. It’s the same approach that we made [in the last round] against Luton. It’s a good opportunity for our players. We are exceeding expectations but we have to have the same attitude. We have to respect our opponents. Nothing is granted. I want to see goals.
It’s a risk to rest players, as Slot did at Plymouth, but the biggest difference between Forest and Liverpool is Nuno’s bench: Sels, Morato, Williams, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Wood, Dominguez, Elanga, Abbott. There are lots of senior pros, matchwinners there.
Full-time: Brest 0-3 PSG
Ousmane Dembélé scored two on a brilliant night for the Parisians. One suspects that that play-off is done if the scores stay like that, and with PSG at home for the second leg.
A hugely disappointing draw for Brest, who would at least like to have faced a foreign side in the play-off round, and a hugely disappointing performance. Ouch.
“Before this season, Ousmane Dembélé’s season best goal tally was 14,” emails Kári Tulinius. “He’s well past 20 already this season. I can’t think of many other players who’ve both been teenage wonders and late bloomers”.
A few eye-catching substitutes in the Sporting v Dortmund game. For the home side, star striker Viktor Gyokeres is only fit enough for a place on the bench, just as he was in the weekend draw at Porto.
For Dortmund, Carney Chukwuemeka could make his debut in yellow and black following his loan move from Chelsea. Dortmund are still light in defence with Niklas Sule making the bench after a long injury lay-off. The vastly underrated Nico Schlotterbeck starts, though. The German hasn’t played for a couple of weeks so a timely return for the centre-back.
“Given that Fulham play Forest on Saturday I hope Exeter are up for a scrap, with plenty of the Things No One Likes To See,” says Richard Hirst, disgracefully.
I suspect that Exeter won’t play 100% nice, and that Forest might have a bit more of the ball than they are used to in the Premier League. Although their low-possession, counter-attacking football is what has worked for them? Let’s see.
Exeter v Nottingham Forest teams
Exeter: Whitworth, Angus MacDonald, Turns, Francis, Harper, Jake Richards, Trevitt, McMillan, Mitchell, Niskanen, Magennis.
Subs: Shaun MacDonald, Purrington, Watts, Woods, Cole, Aitchison, Jones, Yogane, Bird.
Nottingham Forest: Carlos Miguel, Boly, Sangare, Toffolo, Sosa, Yates, Danilo, Alex, Jota Silva, Moreira, Awoniyi.
Subs: Sels, Morato, Williams, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Wood, Dominguez, Elanga, Abbott.
Sporting v Borussia Dortmund teams
Sporting: Rui Silva, Fresneda, St Juste, Diomande, Matheus Reis, Simoes, Debast, Quenda, Trincao, Araujo, Harder.
Subs: Israel, Callai, Morita, Gyokeres, Braganca, Inacio, Gabriel Teixeira, Ricardo Esgaio, Brito, Quaresma, Afonso Moreira, Anjos.
Borussia Dortmund: Kobel, Ryerson, Can, Schlotterbeck, Svensson, Sabitzer, Gross, Adeyemi, Brandt, Bynoe-Gittens, Guirassy.
Subs: Meyer, Laurenz Lotka, Yan Couto, Anton, Ozcan, Reyna, Beier, Duranville, Chukwuemeka, Sule.
Juventus v PSV team news
Juventus: Di Gregorio, Weah, Gatti, Veiga, Kelly, Locatelli, Douglas Luiz, Gonzalez, McKennie, Yildiz, Muani.
Subs: Perin, Pinsoglio, Francisco Conceicao, Koopmeiners, Vlahovic, Thuram, Savona, Rouhi, Mbangula.
PSV: Benitez, Ledezma, Flamingo, Obispo, Junior, Schouten, Veerman, Perisic, Saibari, Lang, de Jong.
Subs: Drommel, Schiks, Malacia, Bakayoko, Bajraktarevic, Til, Driouech, Babadi, Land, Kuhn, Uneken, Nagalo.
We’re well into the second half in the early Champions League kick-off. Brest, in many ways the stand-out team of the league phase are 2-0 down at home to PSG. Remember, there are two legs to these play-offs, so still a long way to go, but it’s still an ominous scoreline for the Brittany club.
The other play-off, remember, is Manchester City v Real Madrid, which is probably going to be absolutely rubbish and not worth paying attention to.
Here’s a handy preview for the Champions League play-offs.
Juventus v PSV
The Old Lady has a spring in her step as Juve gear up to welcome PSV to Turin. After a three-game winless run, Juventus have claimed back-to-back victories, beating Empoli and Como to get their top-four pursuit back on track. January signing Randal Kolo Muani has been a breath of fresh air, scoring five league goals in just three outings for the Italian side; only Dusan Vlahovic (eight) has netted more for Thiago Motta’s side this season.
Kolo Muani, along with fellow January arrivals Lloyd Kelly and Renato Veiga, have been added to the club’s Champions League squad, and the trio may be needed from the outset. Left-back Andrea Cambiaso, who was linked with a move to Manchester City last month, is a doubt, while fellow defenders Bremer, Juan Cabal and Pierre Kalulu all miss the meeting with Eredivisie leaders PSV.
The Dutch side have their fair share of concerns. Defenders Oscar Boscagli and Richard Ledezma are missing due to injury, with the absence of the former a huge blow. Forward pair Malik Tillman and Ricardo Pepi are also sidelined, though Peter Bosz can at last call upon Ivan Perisic after he joined too late to be included in their Champions League squad for the league phase. Loan signing Tyrell Malacia may also feature at left-back following Matteo Dams’ move to Saudi side Al Ahli. Prediction: Juventus to progress
Sporting v Borussia Dortmund
Sporting have struggled since Ruben Amorim’s departure. They remain top of the Primeira Liga but their 1-1 draw with Porto at the weekend means their lead has been cut to just four points. They have been inconsistent under Rui Borges, winning just two of their last five matches.
Sporting have issues in midfield. Morten Hjulmand misses the first leg meeting with Borussia Dortmund due to a ban, and João Simões was forced off at the weekend, meaning Zeno Debast should partner Hidemasa Morita in the middle of the park. Nuno Santos, Pote and Geny Catamo are also injured, but star striker Viktor Gyökeres is back.
Borussia Dortmund were beaten by Stuttgart at the weekend, continuing a poor run of form. They are 11th in the Bundesliga, having lost as many matches as they have won this season. The good news is that centre-back Nico Schlotterbeck is back after a ban. New arrival Carney Chukwuemeka will have to wait a little longer to make his debut due to injury, and he is joined by Felix Nmecha and Niklas Sule on the sidelines.
Dortmund face an uphill task in Lisbon this weekend; they have lost nine of their last 13 away matches. That said, two of their five away wins this season have come in the Champions League. Prediction: Sporting to progress
Preamble
Variety is the spice of life, and this MBM has taken that saying quite literally. Not only will we bring you live piping hot FA Cup action from Exeter v Nottingham Forest – where the Midlands club will attempt to avoid becoming the second elite Premier League club to become unstuck in Devon in the last few days – we will also bring you the latest updates from Juventus v PSV and Sporting v Borussia Dortmund – the two 8pm GMT Champions League play-off matches that aren’t covered in our dedicated Manchester City v Real Madrid liveblog.
A reminder that the FA Cup match is a straight knockout match – no VAR and no replays of course – with extra time and penalties if needed. Exeter or Forest will face Ipswich Town at home in the fifth-round, so a very winnable tie given the stage of the competition.
In the Champions League matches, this is the first of a two-leg play-off, with the winners reaching the last-16 knockout round.
Oh, and if that’s not enough, there will be a sprinkling of EFL action as well (if my hands type fast enough). There are five Championship matches tonight and plenty of League One and Two action to boot.
Exeter, Turin and Lisbon. What a treat. All three kick-offs, across the two competitions, are at 8pm GMT.